Tempest

Unlike my Henslowe, neither the yarn nor the pattern for this next shawl project sat around waiting for very long. On my birthday in June, my boyfriend and I wandered into my LYS after dinner, and I said, "Hey, it's my birthday! You could buy me a skein of yarn!" Because he is nice (and a pushover and way too inclined to enable my hobbies), he agreed, and I picked out a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Azules.

I usually buy yarn with a project in mind, unless it's a special occasion - like my birthday, or I'm traveling, or that yarn is on sale, or... But even if I get some yarn just because, I need to think of something to make with it, or it will crawl out of my stash and haunt me and scold me. So, I pretty quickly decided I would knit a shawl with my new Malabrigo. The deep, varied blues reminded me of the ocean, so I wanted a pattern that worked with that idea.

Tabetha Hedrick's Tempest Shawlette was, without doubt, the perfect choice. I added this pattern to my favorites on Ravelry when it came out in March of this year, but it wasn't really a priority until I got the Malabrigo. And then it jumped right into the top of my queue.



This shawl was not difficult to make, although the wave pattern did start to get tedious. But fortunately, once that part was done, I flew through the body in no time. I did make one modification: the pattern says to pick up and knit to start the stockinette section, but I picked up and purled, then reoriented those stitches when I came back to them on the next row. Picking up and knitting was giving me a "chain" between the wave pattern and the stockinette stitch, and while I don't think that looks bad, I wanted them to flow seamlessly together on my shawl.



I'm really happy with this shawl and I've already worn it once, despite it being the middle of summer. And I found the perfect shawl pin at my LYS to go with it!